FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

Oct. 16, 2018 (EIRNS)—Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., laid out a very interesting proposal while he was in California yesterday, as a participant in the Fort Ross dialogue, an annual event sponsored by the Stanford U.S.-Russia Forum since 2012. Fort Ross is an historic Russian settlement in Sonoma County, that was a center for Russian trading activity on the North American West Coast over 1812-1842.

“When it comes to the Fort Ross dialogue, I think that this is an important and necessary event. This event gives an opportunity for Russian and American colleagues to just sit down together and talk, to think about the world we are living in. The main question is what to do in order to improve Russian-U.S. relations,”

Antonov said, reported TASS.

“It is just not normal that we have almost no communication channels now. There are contacts between presidents, ministers [of foreign affairs], between [U.S. National Security Advisor John] Bolton and [Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay] Patrushev, but there are no contacts at a lower level,”

he noted.

“I took advantage of my visit to California, while meeting with students, political analysts, with businessmen and politicians, to explain this positive program of restoring ties between the two countries,”

Antonov continued. At the forum,

“interesting conversations were held about at least two projects—in particular, on setting up a joint committee, commission, council consisting of ‘business captains’ who could get together and think about ways to find concrete projects of economic cooperation in the existing gaps,”

the Russian ambassador said.

“Colleagues also supported Vladimir Putin’s idea about creating a bilateral Russian-U.S. commission at the level of former political analysts, former diplomats, [former] ambassadors, former defense ministers, former generals, who could get together and think about possible projects in bilateral relations, who could help get the relations out of a crisis situation,”

he added. “It would be great if that would start to develop in California,” Antonov said.